The defining role Scarlett Johansson almost gave away: “Little bit of coaxing”
Following a few questionable roles as a child (we can’t forget Home Alone 3), Scarlett Johansson found the perfect formula for success when she transitioned to more stimulating roles in her late teens, appearing in the likes of Ghost World and Lost in Translation.
It wouldn’t take long for her to wind up with bigger offers coming her way – I mean, her stunning performance in Sofia Coppola’s introspective tale of alienation and connection was always going to lead to further opportunities – and Johansson quickly ascended the Hollywood ranks.
Just because she’d starred in an Oscar-winning film didn’t mean she was suddenly immune to auditioning, though, and in 2003, shortly after Lost in Translation, she found herself battling for a role that she wasn’t sure she was even right for, but of course, she nabbed it, proving herself to be a capable leading star.
Girl with a Pearl Earring, directed by Peter Webber, saw the actor play Griet, a young maid sent to work for painter Johannes Vermeer, who is commissioned to create a portrait of the woman for his patron Pieter van Ruijven, and while talking to AboutFilm, Johansson revealed that she didn’t initially get the role, although she really wanted it.
“I had to audition for it. I wanted to do it as soon as the script came to me, but I went in for a reading, and originally didn’t have the part, actually, which I was quite upset about,” she claimed.
Yet, things soon changed as Johansson was wanted for the part after all, and he now had to make a decision – should she go for the role even though she’d already accepted that it probably wasn’t meant to be? “You learn to deal with those things. You do it for so long, and you learn to accept that things work out for the better,” Johansson admitted.
Adding, “Then I was shooting The Perfect Score in Vancouver, and Andy [Paterson] and Peter [Webber] – our producer and our director – came, as Peter says, crawling on a gravelly floor on his hands and knees with weights on his feet, to fish me back.”
What was she to do? “At first I was like, ‘No!’ because I wanted to make sure that it was really so, if he really thought that I was right for the part, or whether it was circumstantial,” the actor said, adamant to only take on roles that truly felt like the right, most authentic thing to do.
“So, [a] little bit of coaxing, I was like, ‘Mmm – OK! I’ll play it.’ And that’s the way it went,” she said. The movie saw Johansson nominated for a Bafta and a Golden Globe, marking yet another huge moment for the star as she continued to grow her career. Of course, the actor has since come to dominate the industry with her mixture of subversive and commercially accessible roles, doing everything from Jonathan Glazer movies to Marvel.
If anyone knows what they’re doing in Hollywood, it’s Johansson; her decision-making ultimately always sees her come out on top.
